DOSE:

4 nuts

oral

Nutmeg

(ground / crushed)

BODY WEIGHT:

250 lb

A few months ago (August '02) I decided to try nutmeg despite reading numerous reports on Erowid that suggested I shouldn't. Now you must understand; I'm not one to tempt fate. I mean, I haven't done many substances and the ones that I have (marijuana mostly) are generally benign when compared to other things. Anyway, my experiences with it consisted of two seperate 'nutmeg trips' (I'd hesitate to call them trips though) within a week, one by myself (the first) and one with a friend (the second, of course).

My decision to try nutmeg wasn't based on any need to get a cheap high, nor was it made just because it's legal, I honestly wanted to try something different and the reports of it that were actually positive seemed pretty nice. It was hard not to be anxious about it however; many of them were very bad experiences as well and though I try not to tempt fate I also have a 'succeed where others have failed' kind of mentality; not that I always succeed, I guess I just have to learn lessons on my own. Oh, and one more point before I begin; I take no medication and I had smoked marijuana a few days before the first experience.

Anyway, after studying it for a few days and contemplating if it was actually worth the trouble involved I worked up my nerve and went to a grocery store near my house without much hope of finding fresh nutmeg (a must, don't take the pre-ground stuff, trust me) and managed to chance upon a jar of it. I took it home and ground up four medium sized nuts (yes, they are actually nuts) with a coffee grinder. A few reports suggested that you measure precisely, but without access to anything but an old postal scale that didn't even measure in grams I tried to do it by dividing the whole amount by the number of nuts (53 g/15 nuts).

At this point I hadn't really prepared anything since I didn't really expect to find any whole nutmeg at the store. I quickly took care of that; first I emptied the last little bit of pop out of a generic 2 liter bottle of 'lemon-lime soda' and filled it with water, that may seem like a lot but I was convinced (and still am) that the bad side effects of nutmeg (especially the headache) are mostly a result of extreme dehydration; and I didn't want to have to go back for a glass of water every fifteen minutes if I was tripping out.

I then ate a small meal (it was 8 am so I went with a bowl of cereal, a banana, and some sausage. I waited a while and decided that 9 am was a good time to start, I also made sure there was nothing important to do all day. I'm pretty heavy (250 lbs.) so I went with a larger dose (all four of the nuts I ground). I mentally prepared myself for the horrible taste synonomous with nutmeg and downed the ground up nuts one spoonful at a time (zero hour). This is where the big bottle of water came in handy.

At first I wanted to see if I could handle the taste and didn't try too hard to avoid my tongue when I dumped it in my mouth. Bad idea. It did taste horrible, and seemed to suck up all the saliva in my mouth. The next spoonful went straight to the back of my throat and wasn't that bad. I finished the rest of it over about half an hour (I needed a little break every time I swallowed some) by chugging massive amounts of water immediately after every spoonful, this way I didn't have to deal with the taste or the loss of moisture.

I then tried to occupy myself for a few hours because I knew it takes a while to come into effect. I put some music on and played video games for a while and noticed a slight head change around +2 hours. At this point it could have easily been some sort of placebo effect that was causing it, this thought stayed in my mind until things started to seem a little nicer; though I wasn't doing much I felt more satisfied with my general situation than I should've been. At about +3 I felt pretty complacent about things and went upstairs (my room's in the basement) for no apparent reason. It's not that my judgement was changed or anything, I just felt a sudden but strong need to do something different. Nobody was around (I live with my mom and my sister) so I didn't have to explain to anyone why I was wandering around looking at things. After doing this for a while I went back downstairs and didn't feel anything but a general groginess as well as a strong need to keep occupied until about +4 hours.

I was sitting on my bed listening to music and reading a magazine when I bumped this lamp near my computer. I tried to move it back to where it was but couldn't seem to get the right light (as to why this seemed important I don't know). I finally gave up and realized that it wasn't the light as much as my perception, things were slightly blurry and it seemed like a weird white/grey fog was floating around my room. I then focused on this cabinet in my room and the pattern of the wood seemed pretty funny to me, the fog was still there. At this point I had certainly achieved a different state of mind but nothing like what I had hoped for. I decided to go upstairs again and ate a cinnamon roll, I stood there enjoying it for longer than I would've normally and walked into my living room.

I sat down on my couch but didn't turn on the tv, I was content just looking around and trying to 'trick my mind' into hallucinating, which, surprisingly, seemed to work at least a bit. For example; I saw what looked like a large dark red rose (in my peripheral vision) blooming from atop this large (and very old) stereo system in the corner of the room. When I focused on it it turned out to be a little jack-o-lantern decoration my mom had put there. I then spent some time trying no to focus on much of anything, this worked to some extent, I managed to repeat the same rose hallucination a couple times. The fog also seemed to follow me upstairs, then back down once I was done in the living room. Other than this I didn't really experience anything close to open eye visuals but my imagination did get an interesting boost. I accepted the extremely absurd with ease and though I couldn't come up with anything clever I made a few, er, interesting drawings (something I do with regularity).

This was the biggest indicator that something within me had changed temporarily. My drawing style seemed drastically different from normal. Rather than the stark, quasi-comic book style I usually had it was all goofy looking and cartoonish, but no less entertaining for me to look at. I replaced cool looking characters with absurd situations and it worked out well. I got lost in the drawing process until hour 6 and by then the head change was still there but no more fog, nor any kind of hallucination for that matter. Overall it was worth it, but nothing I'd wanna do a lot. I did experience some of the side effects but nothing too horrible. There was some definite short term memory loss, most of it came back to me later though, and I only had a slight headache and dry mouth for an hour or so the next morning.

At that point I thought I was done with it for a while (or always, it was somewhat exhausting considering it lasted all day) until a friend (I'll call him 'Orn') told me he was rather interested. Let me tell you a bit about Orn, he's had very little drug experience, he's just used marijuana a couple of times. I honestly didn't know what to expect considering he's considerably lighter than me, plus drugs affect different people in different ways. Where as I had an interesting but benign experience he might completely trip out. There was only one way to find out however and I wasn't going to deprive him of a new experience. His reasons for trying nutmeg where different from mine though (from what I could tell anyway), he seemed much more excited about the fact that it's legal, legality was never much of an issue with me, if I could find other illegal substances than marijuana and I wanted to try them their illegality wouldn't stop me.

Anyway, I thought that maybe my other experience was kind of dissapointing because I ate something so close to zero hour. This time I ate three hours ahead of time and only ate a bacon sandwich (I like bacon, okay?). Orn came over about 8 am (I wake up for the 'night shift' which is why I was awake three hours before 8). I'd already explained to him what happened to me and what we should do. Some time around nine we each took our doses. His was something like 2.5 - 3 nuts and I took 5 since that smaller original dose didn't do as much as I'd hoped. We used the method I had originally devised but it took Orn a little longer to get the hang of it; it looked like he was gonna puke for a moment. I got all mine down but he couldn't finish the last spoonful of his so I took it, not wanting it to go to waste. We sat around fighting off nausea for a while (the little bit of nutmeg that I did taste this time actually seemed worse even though I knew what to expect).

Around +1 we made the (possibly bad) decision to go drive somewhere, even though i thought it would be best to take it on an empty or near empty stomach. Orn hadn't yet eaten and I was kind of hungry so we made our way to a fast food restaurant. For some reason it seemed to kick in a whole lot faster this time. Perhaps it was being in the sunlight and driving around, or maybe it was being around Orn, or perhaps it was because I was used to the feeling and knew when it hit me. I dunno. Whatever the cause both me and Orn were having an interesting time sitting in the car eating sausage biscuits. We were there enjoying our respective processed foods; listening to NPR when a ray of sunlight caught my attention. It looked a whole lot nicer than normal. That was the confirmation I was looking for to prove that the higher dose was a good idea.

We left and somehow decided to go mini-golfing instead of heading home like originally planned. On the way there we were in this weird giddy state, it felt like I was high off of anticipation. (I must make note that at this point I started to lose track of time completely, so from here on I'll abstain from even guessing). As we got closer to our destination talking to Orn became easier, not that it was hard to begin with, I just lost any inhibition I had at the moment (though i don't remember at all what we talked about). We finally arrived only to find that it was closed. Okay, not a problem, one of the local malls (and also the biggest one) was within walking distance. We went in and I instantly became very aware of the now significant head change I was experiencing. Things seemed slower and the buzz I had came in waves with increased intensity each time. We went from store to store looking at various things for an unknown amount of time (my perception of time was almost obliterated by the nutmeg, even more so than in the car). At some point I completely stopped caring what people thought of me, if anything we just looked like a couple of stoned teenagers, nothing to worry about.

At some point Orn started to seem a little alienated and maybe even hostile towards me, I don't know if it was because of how he was acting or because of how I felt. It was like everything he said he was accusing me of something rather than just making observations like we had both been doing all day.

Altogether it really was worth it. It left me really burnt out though, and the side effects were slightly worse the second time. That's not surprising considering I didn't drink nearly as much water as the first time. I don't know why I didn't hallucinate the second time though, especially considering the larger dose I took. Oh well, it was fun but I think I'm done with nutmeg for now, perhaps the rest of my life.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 18875
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 13, 2002	Views: 35,482
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Nutmeg (41) : Various (28), Retrospective / Summary (11), First Times (2), General (1)